[Suggestion] New Victory Condition.

I agree with the idea of a new victory condition, specifically pertaining to the Civilization tree.  I'm not sure I agree with the how of it.  Wonders are nice and all, sure, and the idea behind needing stuff from the other trees, and the why behind that, is actually really well thought out.  I just feel like there's gotta be a better way...  Unfortunately, I'm all tapped out on semi-rational-but-poor ideas atm.

Edit:  Just realized that that last line could sound rather rude and callous depending on how it's read...  That was a self-deprecating remark, not a snide remark.

Well in GalcivII, they have victory by influence, which could be considered a civilization victory. But personally I find it tedious. I can't really think of anything else at the moment, so I'll have a bit of a brainstorm later.

btw, I don't assume the worst when it comes to reading the tone of a comment on an internet forum.

Mmm, sounds borderline Civ Cultural Victory.  Gotta go outside the box for this one, has to be something...  Spectacular.  It's a Civilization-Tech related victory, after all.

And thank you for not assuming the worst.  Sometimes I just assume that others will assume the worst.  =P

Wouldn't having a city at a certain size do. It would obviously have to be huge. But once it got there then maybe you would have to build the 'wonder' to firmly establish it as the capital of the world. I would suggest it would have to have both a certain size area of influence, (probably a percentage of the map) without including the AOI ffom your other cities. It would also have to have a certain population.

I am pretty new to this game so i don't know how feasible it is, but i can imagine it would be great fun watching the remaining factions besieging the city to stop the wonder getting built. This would also encourage less city spamming if you went for this type of victory, as you would need as much food pumped into the city as possible (with the new rules for cities in 1.1 requiring food to start up)

My gripe with this idea is we have a lot of that kind of thing in the game already, albeit not as victory conditions...  At the every least, it oughta require a certain population as well...  Maybe 5000 citizens...  Mmm, no, that's too small, only double a Size 5 City...  10,000 would be a good starting point.  The problem at this point would be coming up with a concept for, "A Wonder so Enthralling and Majestic that it lulls people into a peaceful state, and draws them from around the world to view."  That's the rub though, there's nothing like that in the real world, so there's no basis for creating a wonder like that...  Sure, they've got magic in the game, but we've got magic tricks of our own...  Look at the Combustion Engine...  The dudes tinkering around with their spell-books in Elemental would certainly think that one of those is pretty damn magical.  Especially when you get a V8 to 'Growl' at them...

My point being, it's too Mundane.  Wonders have been done and over-done in a dozen games before, and so has Influence...  Like I said before, whatever it is, it's gotta be outside the box.  Possibly -WaY- outside the box.  Let's keep brainstorming this one...

I see your point and agree with you in principle, that if something more interesting than a Wonder can be thought up, it would be much better. However, I think the reasoning behind a Wonder winning you the game is that it is a declaration of cultural superiority. This doesn't flow very well with the lore of Elemental, but works if you think of it in terms of playing a Civ based game.

Better than a Wonder would be going all the way and requiring the civic victory to require a player to bring about a Golden Age (again). The intro to the game does imply rebuilding to land and restoring the glory of the world as it was before the Titans came. A Wonder than does nothing but bring about a civic victory would be part of the condtions, and another would be to build all the unique buildings for your faction. There could be additional requirements (X% of the map in your ZoC, N population, ect), but those would be the main requirements.

That's starting to sound a lot better now. I would also suggest that to achieve this victory condition, you need to have at least one ally or some blood ties to other nations, as it is difficult to believe that you can bring about a Golden Age if everyone is against you, or you don't at least have a friendly ear in the courts of the other factions.

Damn, I've gotta go, I'll get back to this later.

Refined idea for Golden Age Victory:

Have a non-accumulating Culture resource. Victory is achieved by having N(%) more culture than any other faction X turns. Having well upgraded cities gives some culture, and unique buildings (especially the Wonder) give a big boost. This also opens a new line of buildings to provide culture like parks, monuments, ect that do not give other bonuses. Possibly other races/alligences could have a "culture resistance" bonus when comparing to see if you have enough culture to begin the count down.

Hey hey, now we're getting somewhere...  Well, you guys are getting somewhere.  I've done nothing but pessimistically shoot down ideas, and I apologize for that...  This kind of thing just isn't my forte.

Making the Wonder not be the victory, but turning it into part of the requirement for the victory, is exactly the kind of thinking we, (Read: Everyone but me,) needs to sort this idea out.

Here's a thought though.  Drop the idea of culture, as a terminology.  Just tie it in with a system we already have in place.  Prestige.  Wouldn't require much re-working, most of what's in the game could easily stay the same, even the Palace, despite providing a non-Prestige bonus.  This also prevents adding yet another resource.  On top of that, most buildings, (If not all the buildings,) in the game that give Prestige are already researched in the Civilization Tree.  Meaning, no re-working of resources and systems.  Rather we'd just be building on what's already in place.

Edit:  This would also tie in very well with the idea of "N Population Required," that you mentioned as potentially being part of the condition Gwenio, thanks to how the Prestige mechanic already works.

By culture I mean an abstract number that measures all the factors that indicate how developed your nation is, like there is currently a score that measures military might.

A civilization victory is a good idea, but constructing a wonder feels too close to casting a Spell of Making. 

I say a cultural victory, like in Sins.  Have cultural influence originate from theaters and spread to other cities through caravans.  Either that or an influence victory where if enough of the land is restored (or corrupted), that's a win for the entire faction.

Or this: constructing a theater or wonder allows you to produce bards.  Bards can enter an enemy city and slowly reduce the loyalty of the city.  Once it reaches zero it is owned by the bard faction, though can be recovered through military means.  The production of bards, and their power, should be related to the overall pretige of the sovereign.  Enemy bards can be countered by bards on your own side, or maybe a civics talent called "thought police" where any bard has a risk of being expelled from the city of killed each turn.

That sounds too much like military victory, as it is "take the other guys' land"; only with a different method.

My only gripe is the terminology.  The system you propose is, itself, sound.  My thinking here is it would be a Prestige Victory as opposed to a Cultural Victory, terminology-wise.  Not really an issue, of course, but that's what I'm thinking.

@Fearzone:  Sits way too close to things we already have in other games, IMO.  At least the bit about using Theatre's and Caravans to spread culture.  Part of why I should feel it ought'a be couched within the Prestige System.  Needing a N Population and/or X% Controlled Land isn't a problem, but seeing as how those functions are already tied into Prestige, it makes sense to me to make the victory an extension of that system, which is easily the most robust system contained within the Civilization tech's to make use of.  Not sure how I feel about the Bards...  Seems sound in theory, but I dunno how it would hold up in practice.

Closer to topic, any ideas on what a Prestige/Cultural Victory wonder would be?  I'm thinking Giant Momument of Awesomeness would be a little too bland here.  Again, has to be something relevant and sufficiently spectacular.  It should also probably be relevant to both Kingdoms and Empires, though it may be easier or even better to have different ones for each side.

Ok, to summarise what I think is the best of what has been put forward so far, I would say something along the lines of:

Golden Age Victory

• The Sovereign spreads his/her prestige across X% of the world through cultural influence.
  
  
• X% is an abstract representation of worldly cultural influence that is contributed to by the total population of the Empire or Kingdom, as well as the prestige gained from improvements, spells, artifacts, and units.
  
  
• A Wonder must be built and defended in order for a Sovereign to qualify for this victory type. The Wonder would give a significant boost to the cultural influence rating.

I think that's pretty good, but if you ask me if it's very interesting, or if it's a victory path I'd be excited to try out, I'd have to say not really.

We should be able to come up with something better.

Just thought of something. What if we mixed in something along the lines of a Global Election ala MoO? It would probably only really work in SP mode, but it might be something to consider. Once every N turns, the Sovereigns convene, friend and foe, and try to become candidates for election, and then actually get elected as ruler. I know it sounds tantamount to being a diplomatic victory, but if cultural achievements are the measure rather than suck-up points, then it could possibly work.

Still brainstorming...

Here's another idea - Subversion. Through espionage, bribery, intimidation, magic and deception, the Sovereign sets all rival factions at each others throats, making sure that there is no faction that is not at war with at least one other faction. There must be a minimum of 4 surviving rival factions for this victory to be achievable.

Personally, I think that would be a lot of fun to do, but I don't think the game is really set up for it. Plus it really doesn't have much to do with a civilization victory.

No, doesn't have anything to do with it really...  Doesn't change how cool it sounds though.

You're right, does sound too closely related to Diplo...  Not that it wouldn't work of course.

I'm still thinking that something along the lines of Prestige is the way to go.  Like I've said before, the Tech Tree already gives you all the major Prestige buildings, so it'd make sense for a Prestige-related victory to be contained in that tree.  Unfortunately, I don't have any new ideas on how to go about setting up said victory...  Damnit, why are concepts so hard?

Requirements for a good and fun civic victory condition:

- Needs to work for both single and multiplayer.

- Must require that player's compete to achieve victory, only they will be using cities rather than armies.

- Should not impact the game prior to your victory (no taking over cities by culture as part of it)

- Should not drag on and on for large maps (like get X% in your ZoC would, such things should only make it easier rather than being the goal itself)

Ultimately, how fun a civic victory will be depends on how good the city/empire building features of the game are. My suggestion about a culture score was based on Black & White II.

What if we tied this in with the dynasty system? Create a Sovereign trait called 'Promiscuous' that significantly increases the birthing rate of the Sovereign (or the Sovereign's spouse) and allows polygamy. Have the Sovereigns spread their seed across the land, and marry their children into other empires, such that a large percentage of the positions of power among rival factions are taken up by the Sovereign's progeny.

A new improvement called 'Grand Vizier's Tower' (or a more interesting name) should be created that is actually built by the Sovereign inside of a rival faction's zone of control. To be able to build this improvement, the Sovereign should have a trade agreement with that empire, and at least two descendants must be citizens of that empire. To keep the tower functioning, regular tributes must be made every N turns to each empire that allows your building in its territory. The tribute amount increases over time, making this a difficult strategy to sustain, so you have to move quickly. Each additional tower built costs significantly more than the previous one.

Once a Grand Vizier's Tower is built in the capital city of every surviving rival faction, the Sovereign wins with a civilization victory.

This strategy could be used in combination with military tactics by knocking out empires that you couldn't or haven't yet achieved the prerequisites with.

It's a bit arrogant to be calling this a civilization victory. Sort of like saying "Civilizations? Who needs your civilizations? I make my own!"

I don't know. Just trying to get out of that box.

Maybe possibly have an ideological flow, driven by prestige, where you don't take over cities actually, but make them succumb to your doctrines.  Your opponent is still in control, but they suffer nerfs particularly against the ideologically superior civilization.  It could be called a "Supremacy" victory, where you choose your doctrine and force everyone else to adopt it.  Different doctrines could have different benefits.  Building a wonder could help spread your message.  Could be spread by specific units, or trade, or just spread along roads, with prestige determining its overall power.

I don't know about others, but to achieve any victory other than conquest, it feels like I really have to go out of my way, and extend the game by at least 50 turns compared to just taking over all other cities.  Conquest victories need to be nerfed before others become serious contenders.

Maybe an economic victory is a possibility?  For example if a faction has trade agreements with every other faction and controls a certain percentage of the world's  (gross) gildar income they win the game?  The only issue with this is that it might be difficult to measure the total amount of gildar in the world at any given time, not to mention that if you're going for a conquest victory you're probably going to end up controlling the vast majority of the world's resources anyway and it might get annoying to win a econ victory when you really were going for conquest. 

That's not a bad idea. You might have prerequisites such as having a trade agreement with all other factions, and having all the economy improvements built in all of your cities. That way it would be less likely to accidentally win an economic victory.

Perhaps a given volume or percentage of the map terrain converted?  Such as the area of influence that converts terrain.  I like the idea of tying it to the 'restoration of the world' thing.  maybe have to research all of the civic techs?

First, I want to correct something about the victory conditions.

It's true that there is a connection between the victory and the path you take in the research, but each victory condition also requires something besides the research, that takes most of the effort.

In the quest victory for example, it's not that hard to get to the research itself. Most of the effort will be to explore, find and win the actual master quest.

In the spell of mastery, you'll need a lot of effort in arcane research, maybe even more then the spell tech tree.

Even in conquest, you're not exactly required to research the army tech path, theoretically you can win with mostly spells and summons and only a minimal effort there.

Back to your suggestion, I think the civilization victory idea should be the path that you can win if you invest mostly in technological advancements. It should require an advanced tech from ALL the paths, and only then you can build the wonder (or wonders) that are required to win.

For example, when reaching a certain research of the exploration tree, you will gain an option to research a tech called "knowledge of the past"

With this taken, your kingdom knows everything it can about the past and what the ancient kingdoms could do before the cataclysm.

This tech will open an advanced option in the other tech trees (with most of the techs as prerequisites).

When finishing most of the civilization tree for example, if you have the exploration tech, you'll get an option to research a tech that symbolized the realization that your kingdom now reached the technological levels of the past, allowing you to build a wonder called "the great monument".

Same thing with the conquest and magic trees, leading to the buildings called "the great war academy" and "the obelisk of magic"

Each of the said buildings will be a "one per nation" buildings, shouldn't be too expensive or hard to build, and should be automatically destroyed if taken from an enemy. If you manage to build all three, you get the civilization victory by proving you can not only match but go beyond the knowledge that was in the times before the cataclysm.